Further to this morning's post about Bob Ward's New Statesman attack piece against Matt Ridley, take a look at this. In his article, Ward said the following:
...Ridley's article suggested that “there is no global increase in floods”, and “there has been a decline in the severity of droughts”. Both statements were grossly misleading. Climate change is increasing global average temperature, but its impact on extreme weather differs across the world. Some regions are becoming wetter while others are becoming drier.
Ridley's claim about drought was based on a paper that did the rounds of the internet a few months back. The key graph is this one:
;)
Fraction of the global land in D0 (abnormally dry), D1 (moderate), D2 (severe), D3 (extreme), and D4 (exceptional) drought condition (Data: Standardized Precipitation Index data derived from MERRA-Land). The decline in drought incidence seems pretty clear to me and I said that it was amazing that Ward would try to suggest otherwise. Ward's response to this was to tell me to "ask the authors".
Now in the past Ward has tried to wriggle out of dilemmas like the one he found himself in by pointing me to related, but largely irrelevant papers, hoping I would lack the inclination to spend the time reading them (example here). However, once bitten twice shy and I don't fall for this trick any longer. So when he told me to "ask the authors" it seemed to simply be a trick out of the same drawer. I therefore asked him to explain his point rather than wasting my time. This was the answer:
Why not ask Doug Keenan to work out if its a statistically significant downward trend?
So, gentle reader, when Ward said that Ridley was being "grossly misleading" in saying that there had been "a decline in the severity of droughts" he was actually agreeing with him. Lest the point be lost on you, Ward agrees with Ridley that the severity of droughts has declined. He just thinks that maybe the decline is not statistically significant. He hasn't demonstrated this of course, but I guess Ward has always felt that evidence is an optional extra.
Nevertheless, the point for readers to remember is that when Ward says someone is being "grossly misleading" he means that they are dead right. The London School of Economics must be very proud.